She and her american husband Hank live on a few acres in Dewhurst which is close to the Dandenong Ranges. There is a large tract of bushland down the back of the property with a bubbling creek that leads to other forest areas.

What happened in her street last night is scary! A horse a few houses away was attacked by a large predator and now has three dinner plate size bites out of it's neck and what look like claw marks on its back and sides. There was no skin left where the bites were.

The horse is OK and is now being well cared for. Its owners still have no idea what happened to it overnight in the paddock. My sister saw the horse and said it was a 'bloody mess'. Hank, who once worked as a Ranger in Florida, said had this been in the US, he would have said bear or big cat.

It was certainly a big clawed predator of some type. Most likely a big cat in my opinion. As mentioned before in this section, one of my best mates once found big cat paw prints on his 13 acre farm just a few kilometres away. They were positively identified as a big cat by an expert sent to investigate by the local newspaper.

It will be interesting to see if this incident is reported in the news media. So far, no one has mentioned the Y. word...

If it's the Dandenongs, it could well be either a Yowie, or even a big cat or similar cryptid.

That doesn't sound like anything a Thylacine would've done (or even been capable of doing), so it could well be a big cat, and if someone with experience of how North American big cats (or other large predators) attack their prey then I'd be willing to listen to them and take that claim seriously.

It's hit-and-miss with the mainstream media. They seem to pick things like this up only when it suits them or it's a slow news day (no MP's spending public money unwisely, for example).

I reckon that the media are told to shut up about these sorts of things by....well, someone with the authority to do so and know they'll be listened to.

I personally think there's a marsupial equivalent of a big cat running around. It's been here for a long time, and certainly pre-dates the old 'American Army Mascot' story by decades. We'll never know what knowledge was lost when so many indigenous Australians were either killed or made to stop discussing/teaching their culture in their own language, so there could be a bunch of animals we've never heard about. Again, this is just a guess on my part - I have nothing to back it up.

My only 'evidence' for this idea is the Fossa of Madagascar, which resembles a big cat (despite being genetically related to the Mongoose) but isn't a cat at all despite looking, moving, behaving and hunting just like one. Its eyes have even developed in such a way that it sees the world as a cat does. I think there's a native animal here that has evolved, much like the Fossa has, to fill that niche (due to convergent evolution).

She and her american husband Hank live on a few acres in Dewhurst which is close to the Dandenong Ranges. There is a large tract of bushland down the back of the property with a bubbling creek that leads to other forest areas.

What happened in her street last night is scary! A horse a few houses away was attacked by a large predator and now has three dinner plate size bites out of it's neck and what look like claw marks on its back and sides. There was no skin left where the bites were.

The horse is OK and is now being well cared for. Its owners still have no idea what happened to it overnight in the paddock. My sister saw the horse and said it was a 'bloody mess'. Hank, who once worked as a Ranger in Florida, said had this been in the US, he would have said bear or big cat.

It was certainly a big clawed predator of some type. Most likely a big cat in my opinion. As mentioned before in this section, one of my best mates once found big cat paw prints on his 13 acre farm just a few kilometres away. They were positively identified as a big cat by an expert sent to investigate by the local newspaper.

It will be interesting to see if this incident is reported in the news media. So far, no one has mentioned the Y. word...

Hi Searcher,

Any chance your relo's could file a report with ARFRA so we can take a look at the area?

Hey Searcher , I was talking to a farmer here about stock losses about 4 years ago . He didn't know because he didn't know exactly how much stock he actually had .
What he did say was that his cattle would often come in with large claw marks down their backs . I've seen large cats within kilometrs of his farm .
Cheers .......

Rusty2 wrote:Hey Searcher , I was talking to a farmer here about stock losses about 4 years ago . He didn't know because he didn't know exactly how much stock he actually had .
What he did say was that his cattle would often come in with large claw marks down their backs . I've seen large cats within kilometrs of his farm .
Cheers .......

Rusty,

We had the same problem in Western Victoria, the local farmers complained a few years back of stock losses to 'large unknown predators' to the NPWS and Dept of Environment....who really didn't give a flying wotsit.

Yowie bait wrote:Geez if youve seen three Rusty then there must be a lot more out there..

With all that free food (stock= easy meals) , they would be thriving.

Great website Vic.

Thanks Yowie Bait, we have been going since the early 80's (though I'm a relative newcomer), and we have literally thousands of reports of unknown animals on file.

We also have audio in which you can clearly hear one of our very frightened members listening to the roar of a large black Big Cat right outside her car. There is no question whatsoever that they are Big Cats and not domestics gone feral. The enormous roar came from a large chest cavity of said huge feline. Other members have seen them with young too. Recently they have been spotted on the outskirts of eastern Melbourne with young as well.

It looks very much like Australia has it's very own native Big Cat! Just don't expect the Government to address this as...

Yowie bait wrote:Geez if youve seen three Rusty then there must be a lot more out there..

With all that free food (stock= easy meals) , they would be thriving.

Great website Vic.

Thanks Yowie Bait, we have been going since the early 80's (though I'm a relative newcomer), and we have literally thousands of reports of unknown animals on file.

We also have audio in which you can clearly hear one of our very frightened members listening to the roar of a large black Big Cat right outside her car. There is no question whatsoever that they are Big Cats and not domestics gone feral. The enormous roar came from a large chest cavity of said huge feline. Other members have seen them with young too. Recently they have been spotted on the outskirts of eastern Melbourne with young as well.

It looks very much like Australia has it's very own native Big Cat! Just don't expect the Government to address this as...

2, The Gun/Hunting lobbies would demand the right to bear larger longarms and carry sidearms for protection ergo messing up the current laws

3, Farmers would demand compensation and protection for livestock losses

And we have been told 'off the record' by a Gov Ecologist that they know they are there anyway! Hard to deny it when Kurt Engels shot one of them a few years back.

Whenever I hear of people going missing in the bush I always think Cat first, and just wish the searchers would look up in the trees when scouting around.

Yep not too much to ask to have a look up in the trees when searching. I have no problem accepting big cats are in the aussie bush.

My dad would tell the story of the u.s servicemen releasing them on the mainland that hed heard when he was younger if theres any truth to that.

Ive heard that bullens african lion safari had a few escapees as well which i dont doubt after visiting the place back in the 70s. I dont think a native cat is out of the question either.

I worked for a fellow recently who grew up in isolated parts of Victoria. He was the typical aussie storyteller, ex truckie and hunter. He had a very simple but scary yowie encounter many years ago which i found quite believable.

Without any promting he told me that it was common knowledge that there were big cats in the area he grew up as well as a known population of thylacines or 'tigers" as he called them. He had at least one fleeting sighting and possibly he or a freind saw one of the cats as well. I cant remember the area and had never heard of it before. This would have been in the 1970s i m guessing due to the man being probably in late 50s or 60.

Its a shame the government boys dont come to the party and fess up. A bit of honesty could go a long way in understanding whats actually living in our forests and possibly prevent some tragedys and unsolved dissapearences as well.

If theyre showing up in the outskirts of melb, it wont be long before theres some footage or a carcass/roadkill incident.

I suppose if you boil the whole big cat thing down , the government is putting Australian lives at risk by not acknowledging their existence .
It's no surprise to me that the government doesn't give a flying sh*t about the general Australian public .

Rusty2 wrote:I suppose if you boil the whole big cat thing down , the government is putting Australian lives at risk by not acknowledging their existence .
It's no surprise to me that the government doesn't give a flying sh*t about the general Australian public .

Cats generally are not really a threat to humans, unless they themselves are sick or old and see a lone bushwalker as an easy meal.

What's a few lives worth compared to the logging and mining corporations though Rusty? They don't give a fig.

If you ever read Col Bailey's book you will see that he has spoken to logging truck drivers under anonymity in Taz, who have seen plenty of thylacines over the years.

The Taz state government lays 1080 down when their own research proves NO FOXES in Tasmania.

There have been sightings of big cats dating back to well before WW2, according to Malcolm Smith's Bunyips & Bigfoots (since the 1870's, if memory serves). If I can accept a Yowie existing, then a native cat, or a creature that resembles one, sounds reasonable as well. I'm wiling to bet there are many animals, large and small, science hasn't recorded yet.